


i used to think that my gucci bag meant i had my life together

by oncewewerezombies



Series: Diamonds and Clubs Month [5]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Aggressive Caretaking, Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Alternia is Terrible, Alternian Empire, Alternian Revolution, F/F, Food, IN SPACE!, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Overworking, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Self-Doubt, Winning is easy, governing is harder, references to helmstrolls and other unethical Alternian practices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:41:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26320567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oncewewerezombies/pseuds/oncewewerezombies
Summary: Terezi is determined that the new Empress gets just the correct amount of tender loving care she requires to keep her on an even keel, whether she thinks she needs it or not.
Relationships: Feferi Peixes & Terezi Pyrope
Series: Diamonds and Clubs Month [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1478099
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	i used to think that my gucci bag meant i had my life together

**Author's Note:**

> A friend asked for some fefrezi for Conciliatory Month, and I hope they like it!
> 
> September 1-7 - Snacks/Meals

When you'd been dreaming and planning of how you'd win and rule the Empire in your little hive under the sea, bring trolls forward into a caring and kinder age as you looked after your cuttlefish, you hadn't thought about how much it was just going to be hard _work_. You get up in the early twilight hours, stumble to the far too big (immense, huge - are you gonna get big enough to N-E-ED it? You suppose you will, eventually - you don't want to think about it) ablutionblock and grope your way to the ablutioncloset to sluice the sopor off your body. They'd tried giving you bodytrolls, servants ( _slaves_ ) to dress and primp and glubbing _spy_ on you, those creaking remnants of your Ancestor's power structures. Mostly elderly seadwellers, but just because they're old doesn't mean they're weak. Mostly it means they're worse, and really set in their ways. You can't cull them, they know how to keep things going and there is _so much_ Empire to keep going. If you're gonna do betta, you can't just cut everybaydy off at the frondhinges for your first act of governance.

When you'd moved from your hatchplanet's surface to the stars, you hadn't had any glubbing CLU-E how big the Empire was. Even if someone had told you, someone you trusted that wasn't glued into the propaganda network that had constituted one hundred perch cent of all the media you got to consume on Alternia, you don't know if you would have believed them even then. How can you get a handle on this? On how fucking _much_ there is? There is so much, and there are so many trolls and they are all your responsibility.

Sometimes you wake up in the bright hours thinking that this is a dream and the reality is the one where you're the one who died, fountaining fuchsia onto the sands of the Imperial Duelling Grounds. Pumper hammering in your chest as you grip the rim with your claws until the sluggishly responsive flesh of the recuperacoon shudders creakingly in reproach at the way you're treating it. Catch your breath. And sometimes, you even manage to get back to sleep. Other days, that's when you get up and start work.

You drink a cup of scalding bitterbean juice, while you put your reports on the viewscreens around you and read your way through the latest dispatches as you brush your hair. You add just enough makeup on your face to hide how hollow your oculars are starting to look, and a nice bright pink lipstick to make it obvious when you smile. Or when you stop smiling and just bare your fangs. You wolf down a protein grubbar and check yourshellf in the mirror one more tide - hair in plaice, smile bright and toothy, nothing of your skimpy breakfast in your fangs and clothes properly zipped and tagged, nofin showing that you don't want to show.

Then you go out and face the roiling bag of vicious backstabbing eels that is your privy council to keep a lid on the Empire for one more night.

You have a feeling that your predecessor ran her Empire by not really running it. Just letting people do what they wanted, within a few overarching rules that meant she was the one at the top of the heap. As long as she was having fun, she didn't care what was happening where she didn't see it. And some of it, she straight out _encouraged_. There have been a few fins you've been able to change right away, but nofin's as easy as you'd thought it would be before you'd arrived on this _fucking_ battleship and started digging through the paperwork. You can't even unplug the Helmsman, becrayse otherwise you wouldn't be able to get to the places you need to at the sort of speed you need to be able to! 

You try not to think about how much it (he) looks like Sollux. You really, R-E-ELLY try not to think about it. 

Everyfin is a close-clawed negotiation, a series of failures where you desperately try to keep even a scrap of your ideals afloat. You're glad Karkat isn't around, that he's off with Sollux and Eridan working on a particular trouble spot with an above average lowblood death rate. You don't want to meet his eyes when you try to explain why you've made the decisions and choices you have, how they're cutting away at your beliefs, your sense of fair play and justice, mercy, until you think you understand why Her Imperious Condescension had been just the way she was. Trolls _suck_ , and sometimes you wish this was the daymare, and not the one where you're waiting to die under your Ancestress' prongs.

"Eat this," says the crisp voice of the one indulgence you allow yourself, and you soften despite the stress and despair tightening your body into a tense wire. You open your mouth to argue and even raise one hand to push Terezi away, but she shoves a fishcake into your mouth before you can. Garbling something, you don't even _know_ what you were trying to say but you're pretty shore it was something angry and petty, you chew warm spicy fishmince and swallow. When you try and say somefin _again_ , Terezi shoves another fishcake in your maw. You chew faster, and frown at her as she perches herself on the corner of your desk and slides a tray full of food and a tall glass of somefin that you're pretty sure is _not_ the energy drink you ordered. "What a wonderful night it is, when I get to save the life of the Empress! I am overjoyed to be of such service to the Empire, Feferi, it is the _highlight_ of my midblood life."

"Don't be a beach," you say indistinctly around what's left in your mouth like you were still a rude wiggler instead of an imperial power, and now that you've actually eaten something, you realise how hungry you are and Terezi is a vile temptress because that tray has more fishcakes on it, and other bitesome little things that you like to eat. Your hungersack makes an embarrassing sound and you scowl at the tray. And then you pick up your eating spears between the stubs of one grasper and start digging in, dipping one of the fishcakes into the fermented legume-juice, the dark liquid sinking in visibly before you pop this new morsel in your mouth. Fuck, it's so glubbing _good_ that you have to close your eyes for a moment as you chew. "You're really RUD-E, you minnow! No one else would talk to their Empress this wave."

"I am in a position of privilege, your most imperialishness," she says with that grating little chuckle that just makes you relax more. Somefin in your thorax wiggles happily at the sound of her sarcastic snicker, like a grub in a warm current. And knowing that for right now, you're with someone who actually cares. About you, as a troll. "Also I know where you sleep! And I am not afraid to take advantage of it." 

As you stuff your face with the food your moirail has brought you, she reaches out to smooth your hair back from your face. Tucking it back behind your earfins, and away from your coronet. You'd gone for one as small as you thought you could get away with - if nofin else, the last Empress had left you a fuckload of gold, and you can sell that to keep things running for the time being. You'd given so much of it away to your fronds already, pouring it into their hands to spread through the Empire like it could smooth away the entrenched scars of centasweeps of cruelty. 

You catch your breath for a moment, suddenly tearing up as you choke down a mouthful of food, the reality of what you're facing smacking you painfully around the gills again. How could you think you'd do this - how could you think you were _ready_ for this -

Terezi's hand smacks your cheek painfully. and she pulls you around to face her. Your mouth is full of food while your eyes dribble tears, and she presses her forehead against yours hard. The edges of her ocular-shields dig into your forehead, and you snuffle woefully. You must be breathing bits of chewed food in her face as you try to catch your breath suddenly, and you are getting snotty but she doesn't make a move to pull away.

"Shoosh, Feferi. Shoooosh." Her thumb catches the edge of your cheekbone and rubs softly, while you sob for a moment. Glad that no one else can see you like this, that she'd interrupted you while you were alone for a moment in your administrativeblock and that you hadn't broken like this in front of someone who'd take advantage of it. She's your _moirail_ , and you have no hesitation in believing that all of this was a carefully constructed plan to bring you to this point. "Shoosh, you big dumb _fishface_ , I've got you."

You let yourself break apart like rolling surf and sob onto the pointed angle of her shoulder as she paps you carefully, measured shooshs whispered against your fin. It's hard, it's so hard to be the Empress and no one understands. And you don't want anyone else to have to understand it either. Once you've finished having a little wiggler breakdown, you let Terezi handfeed you. Even if she misses your mouth sometimes, smearing sauce on your cheek as you both discuss some of the newer reports, and the news from your farflung fronds and a few other authoritative former rebellion leaders, sprinkled through the stars as sparingly and as useshoally as you can manage. You think about them as often as you can bear to; what you've asked them to do is so dangerous, and they're alone and far away from you. But what other choices do you have? There are no other trolls in the Empire that understand what you're trying to do, why you're doing it, and actually _support_ you for it.

"Better?" Terezi asks, and her fangs shine as she grins at you before wiping at your face with a cleansersheet. You take it away from her before she pokes your eye out, and wipe your own mouth and cheeks, thank you. After that, you pull open a drawer on your desk and find your make-up sack so you can fix your face for public consumption again.

"I think so." You check your lipstick and smile, baring your fangs. Nope, no scraps of leaf or anything between them - thank GLUB, you think you would actually _die_ on the spot if one of the Admiralty pointed out you had something stuck between your teeth. It's been hard enough to get them to treat you like the adult you are as it is. Terezi pulls herself off your adminplane and to her feet, before she throws her arms around you, hugging you closely. You wrap your arms around her spare, wiry body and feel the slow lukewarm heat of her against your chill flesh. "I betta be..." You sigh, drawing in air and feeling your primary gills flutter under your shirt. "Thank you."

"It's what I'm for, miss raspberry macaroon," she says, and you feel the universe come aright underneath you, in the glitter of her smile and the red of her glasses. Behind them is a horror, red and raw flesh, never properly healed and still sore and pulsing. But she never shows a sign of it, not ever. You're glad you dropped Vriska in one of the worst situations you could think of, to see what good all her boasting would do her in the sphere of influence of one of your most casteist Admiral-Lords - the _reelly_ annoying thing is that she'll probably come through with shining colours, and fix it for you and then you'll have to listen to her about it for shrimply _ages_. But for now, it keeps her far away from Terezi, and from you. "I'll be back at dinner time, with more food! I adjure you to _be prepared_ this time!"

"Shoooore," you sniff, and let her take the tray. As she saunters away, you reach out and slap her on the ass to hear her squawk before smiling now, you turn back to your work. It's piled up while you were eating and snivelling like a grub, but you feel refreshed. Better able to cope with it. "Moby you can even sleep over." 

"Maybe, if you're a _good girl_ , and do all your chores!" She laughs her jagged glass laugh all the way out the door and still smiling, you bend your attention to the work in front of you. Feeling renewed, and like this time, _this time_ \- that you might just be able to make the changes you know you need to make.

This is your Empire now, god damn it, and it will be what you want it to be.


End file.
